Yesterday morning the Historical Society (ie: Penny and I <g>) brainstormed with the other Grade 3 parents about ideas for the display we're thinking of doing for the school's 50th anniversary. Turns out there's lots of people who know lots of other people who went to the school years ago. This is great, it means we'll have a better chance of scoring some memorabilia.

And then Soulsis and I nicked off down to the city (sans children, weee!) to see the Guy Bourdin and Caravaggio exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Bourdin was a fashion photographer during the 70's and 80's and the blurb on the wall said he wanted to do more than simply photograph another dress or another pair of shoes so he attempted to construct narratives within his photographs, sometimes with overlays of violence and pornography...
Right. In the end, though, they're still just photographs of fashion – superficial and disposable, you view them then move on.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy the exhibition. Some of the pieces were amazing, Bourdin produced some exceptionally strong compositions, but it wasn't his fashion photos that prompted an emotional response for me, not even the blatantly sexual, apparently controversial ones. A small, understated part of the exhibition comprised a set of b/w photos which, I assume, weren't 'work' shots as such but were more like artistic studies of textures and patterns formed within rocks, and gravel, trees and sand, and piles of discarded cow bones. Some of these images were beautiful and they're the ones I'm still thinking about...

Of the 66 paintings in the Caravaggio exhibition only 9 of them were originals - the rest were representative of the artist's followers and contempories - but it was the originals that really stood out. There's an amazing clarity to Caravaggio's work, a brightness that's instantly recognisable. Caravaggio was famed, and scorned in the 16th/17th century, for the realism in his paintings. He's credited with starting a whole new way of thinking about painting; he was evidently one of the first to downplay the background and put the subject right at the forefront of the piece. (Please, anyone with more than a passing interest/knowledge in Art History, feel free to correct any of my inaccuracies. : ) I admit I love this style (chiara obscuro? Light and dark - Rembrandt was another proponent...) it can be very powerful. Interestingly though, it wasn't the subject matter Soulsis and I enjoyed looking at so much as the details. How would that gorgeous court dress have been constructed? See the books in that stack there? Look at how they've been bound. Look at the glass that gambler's drinking out of, it's beautiful! <bg> It's the little things...

The cubs spent the evening with their father so when we got back from the Gallery Soulsis and I took advantage of the hush and had a girly moment watching the Love Actually DVD I gave her for her birthday. <happy sniffle> Love that movie...
Here's the funny thing though. We'd gotten halfway through watching the deleted scenes when Soulsis had to leave. The cubs had gotten home by then so they leapt in and commandeered the telly to watch Cartoon Network. In between bustling about doing mummy-stuff I caught a little of what was on the telly. My initial response was to think that yes, this was crap and it was a good thing it'd been deleted from the final product... And then I remembered that this was Scooby Doo they were watching and it was actually part of the program.
I've never liked Scooby Doo <beg>